Roseneau rehired employees who accepted improper payments

Beaufort Clerk of Court Jerri Roseneau rehired two employees who accepted $7,100 in improper payments from her predecessor when she took over the office in 2009.

Roseneau, who cruised to victory in the Republican primary last month with about 80 percent of the vote, said she wasn’t aware of $6,000 in clothing stipends and $1,100 in conference reimbursements accepted by LaSandra Young and Joni Fields from former clerk Elizabeth Smith.

In 2010, a Beaufort County jury convicted Smith of embezzlement and misconduct in office for pilfering $23,500 of public money. A separate federal indictment over the misappropriation of funds designated for child support enforcement ended with a guilty plea in 2011. Neither case resulted in a prison sentence.

The state decided not to pursue charges against the recipients of Smith’s wrongdoing, said 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone.

“It was not a proper use of taxpayer money, but it wasn’t criminal,” Stone said.

His investigation also turned up about $24,000 in compensation to Young that was illegally redirected from a federal fund for child support enforcement.

Young now serves as a general sessions clerk while Fields works data entry for the civil court, Roseneau said.

Young tried to unseat Smith in a 2008 petition bid after her former boss fired her and Fields, according to an archived Island Packet story. Smith said the two lacked increasingly critical technological know-how while the scorned former employees argued she retaliated against political disloyalty.

Roseneau said she was aware the two worked for Smith when they applied to the clerk’s office again but did not know they took improper payments.

She said she didn’t seek details from the embezzlement investigation because she was focused on running the court after her sudden appointment and assumed candidates who reached her were adequately screened.

“I had worked with those ladies for 20-plus years in the private sector (when dealing with the court as a legal assistant at a local firm), and they were never anything but professional,” she said.

Their job performances have remained satisfactory since their rehiring, she added.

Even if the employees handle their jobs expertly, restoring confidence to a public office after a financial scandal is more of a public relations game, said Lisa Sisk, a professor at the University of South Carolina who has a background in crisis communications.

“I don’t think that was a very strategic move on her part,” Sisk said. “It’s unethical, I think, and from a public relations standpoint it’s a mess. No matter how talented these people are, they were involved in a scandal, and just their mere presence back in that office paints everything in a pretty bad light.”

Roseneau currently faces no competition for re-election after routing Ray Garza in the Republican primary. Garza, another former Smith clerk, accepted payments totaling $900 for clothing after a promotion to a more visible court job, a medical payment reimbursement for a benefits lag, and the cost of a course required as part of a 2002 DUI conviction, according to his own sworn affidavit from the investigation.

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